Ichiraku Ramen is Always There for You
by Ink Reservoir
Summary: Sasuke and Sakura sign the papers for their divorce. This fic is the common base for AU variations revolving around Divorced!Sasuke.


Sasuke signs the papers without looking at Sakura and it occurs to him that this is what he'd been doing for their entire marriage—not looking at her, even when they were actually together. The Leaf Village's government hadn't even bothered with making them separate for a period of time, as was customary before filing for divorce, because Sasuke had been living far from his family for so many years anyway. He and Sakura had talked to each other more in the last few months than they probably ever had in their lives. Sasuke would pay off all the loans on their house and give Sakura money to replace the clothes she had sewn the Uchiha emblem into. Sakura and Sarada would live in the house. Sakura would use her maiden name again. Sarada would stay with Sakura during the week and Sasuke would get to see her on weekends. (Sarada frowned when they told her of this arrangement, Sasuke heard her say to Sakura through the door that she wants nothing to do with him.)

He slides the paper across the table to Sakura, his eyes trained on his sandals. She sniffs. Sarada is at Naruto's house right now—he refused to oversee the divorce and Shikamaru's signature will be the final one on the paper instead.

Sasuke hears Sakura put the pen down and rises to his feet, picking the paper up off the table. He walks briskly to the door to the room where Shikamaru waits, but not briskly enough.

"Why are you doing this to me?" Sakura's quiet voice says behind him. Sasuke stops, his hand on the doorknob, and stifles a sigh.

"Why—" her voice catches and he hears her stand to her feet. "After everything we've been through—why do you have to leave me alone again?"

Sasuke looks down at the paper in his hand, his eyes unfocused as he tries to reread some of the words.

"Don't you know that without you, I—"

"Sakura."

She inhales sharply.

"Sakura," he repeats, turning away from the door to look at her—face red, blotchy and stained with tears—before looking quickly away again. "You're fine without me. The last thirteen years have proved that."

"No," she says. "You were there before, even if you couldn't physically be there I knew you were—"

"It's too late for this," Sasuke cuts her off again. "The papers are signed."

"I just thought you might change your mind!" she bursts.

Sasuke's stomach twists, and the paper crinkles in his hand. He looks back to the door, his head lowered so his hair covers his eyes.

"Sorry."

He swallows, then opens the door to find himself face-to-face with Shikamaru. Sasuke takes a step back, eyes widening.

"I heard arguing," Shikamaru says, taking a step back too. "Was going to check that everything's all right."

His gaze drifts behind Sasuke to Sakura. Sasuke freezes, hoping for a moment that it doesn't look like he did anything to hurt her before reminding himself not to care. This was a strange habit he'd developed after returning to the Leaf. Before, it was natural to him not to worry about the opinions of others so long as he knew the truth, but now it's more difficult to differentiate for himself what's right and what's wrong; what to feel and what not to feel.

"We're fine, Shikamaru," Sakura says in an uneven voice. Shikamaru frowns, shooting Sasuke a glare. Sasuke keeps eye contact until it's Shikamaru who looks away, taking the paper from Sasuke's hand.

"You looked over everything?" he asked. Sasuke nods.

Shikamaru reads through it quickly before walking over to the table where Sasuke and Sakura had been sitting.

"Well, this is it, I guess," he says, picking up the pen and scrawling his signature across the bottom.

"I—" Sakura starts but stops. Shikamaru looks at her.

"It's finished," he says.

Sakura breaks down sobbing, and the next few minutes are a blur that Sasuke barely registers. Sakura says something about love. Shikamaru calls him a few names. Everything in the room seems like it's slipping slowly to the left. Sasuke walks out in a daze. Kakashi stands outside the Hokage office looking at the floor with his arms folded; Sasuke passes him silently. Outside, there are children playing, and he starts instinctively walking the path to the Village's gates. Bsefore one of the guards can ask him where he's going, realizes that he meant to be going to his house.

The part of the Village where the Uchiha clan had lived before had been demolished with his permission and built over.

He forgot he had authorized that.

Sasuke stops.

He can't go to where Sakura and Sarada live now, and he can't leave the Village without a mission.

"Hey, are you all right?"

Sasuke turns to the source of the voice and realizes that he's standing outside Ichiraku Ramen.

He blinks quickly. "Yes."

"Come in anyway," Teuchi waves his hand at Sasuke. "The ramen is good. Where's Naruto?"

"Um, at home," Sasuke guesses, and complies with the older man's wishes, ducking under the cloth shop front to sit on one of the stools.

"Oh," Teuchi says. "You know, he comes by less often now that he's the Hokage. Nice boy, Naruto, but now that he can actually afford meals here, you'd think he'd swing by more."

"Well, he is busy," Sasuke defends Naruto feebly, looking at the menu. He doesn't even really like ramen.

Teuchi laughs. "I'm just joking. What can I get you?"

Sasuke places his order and traces circles with his fingertip on the counter while he waits. Maybe he should've just let Sakura have full custody over their daughter. He was being unfair to demand a relationship of Sarada when he'd never made any meaningful attempts to establish one himself. He'd probably still be busy now if not more so and seeing her on weekends was unlikely anyway—why didn't he think about this earlier?

He takes his cell phone from his pocket and stares at it. …right, the little book icon means contacts.

He touches it and scrolls to Naruto's name, listening to it ring.

"Hello?" Naruto answers and Sasuke's back straightens, startled. "Sasuke?"

"I forgot about the voice coming out of the device thing," Sasuke says.

"Oh my god, we've had phones for years now."

Sasuke is quiet.

"Where are you?" Naruto asks, changing the subject. "Is it done?"

"It's done," Sasuke says. There's silence on the other end of the line. "…Naruto?"

"Yeah, sorry," Naruto says. "Um, everything's fine over here with Sarada, if that's why you called."

"It's not," Sasuke says. "I called to say that I forgot I have nowhere to live."

"You what?"

"I don't have anywhere to live," Sasuke says in a quieter voice. "I was counting on my old house but we demolished it, remember?"

"Crap!" Naruto exclaims and Sasuke sighs.

Teuchi puts the ramen in front of him.

"Is that the Hokage you're talking to?" Teuchi asks. Sasuke nods. "Why isn't he here?"

"Is that Teuchi?" Naruto asks.

"Oh my god," Sasuke says, the conversation going faster than he cares to keep up with.

"You're at Ichiraku?"

"Yes."

"Oh my gosh!" Sasuke can hear Naruto grinning. "You like ramen now, huh Sasuke?"

"No," Sasuke says. "Can we get back to what we were talking about?"

"Why wouldn't you invite me?"

" _Naruto."_

"Sorry, sorry," Naruto says. "Umm, why don'tcha stay with me, then? Until we sort this out?"

Sasuke sighs, tugging on his bangs. "You're fine with that? What about Hinata?"

"I'm sure it'll be okay if it's just for a couple days," Naruto says. Sasuke hears someone else talking in the background. "It's your dad."

Sasuke waits, looking at the bowl of ramen in front of him as the amount of smoke coming from it lessens.

"Sorry, was talking to Sarada," Naruto says.

"Yeah."

"Anyway, I'm sure it's okay. Come by tonight, yeah?"

"You'll be there?" Sasuke asks.

"No promises. I took this afternoon off so I have a load of stuff to do."

"Right…" Sasuke says. "I um, I gotta go now."

"Okay," Naruto says. "Talk later."

"Yeah."

Sasuke hangs up. Another customer enters the shop and Teuchi walks away from Sasuke to serve them. The ramen didn't get cold while he was talking to Naruto, and while it isn't that good, it's probably as good as ramen can actually get.

His mind strays to the image of Sakura's teary face, and Sasuke thinks that things would be much better right now if Suigetsu were here to be insensitive and change the subject.

But Taka is back at one of Orochimaru's old hideouts because Sasuke didn't make enough of an effort to convince Naruto to let them into the Leaf Village.

Maybe he deserves to be alone with his thoughts.

 **A/N:** I basically wrote this as an establishing point, I guess. I've been thinking about Divorced!Sasuke for a while now and will probably be writing a lot of him. I just kind of wanted to have this here as a foundation for the AU. There's a lot of different strands of thought that branched out of this for me and there'll probably be different variations of the outcomes for this, but I figured I'd just have this here as something all the variations will have in common. Thank you for reading!


End file.
